President Obama’s Remarks in Germany

BERLIN — Pressed personally by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany about the United States’ surveillance of foreigners’ phone and e-mail traffic, President Obama said Wednesday that terrorist threats in her country were among those foiled by such intelligence operations worldwide — a contention that Ms. Merkel seemed to confirm.

Their remarks, made first in private during Mr. Obama’s state visit here, and then publicly in a joint news conference, were evidence that the surveillance controversy set off by leaked documents from a former National Security Agency contractor, Edward J. Snowden, had followed the president overseas as he concluded a three-day diplomatic trip to Europe.

That disclosure has been particularly provocative in Germany, where the history of the Nazi era and then postwar surveillance in Communist East Germany have left a legacy of national concern for privacy and civil liberties.

Ms. Merkel, who grew up in East Germany, reflected that sensitivity in raising the issue with Mr. Obama. Yet she also expressed support for such operations, if balanced by “due diligence” to guard citizens’ privacy rights, and said Germany had received “very important information” from its cooperation with the Americans against international terrorism.

The leaders’ exchanges on that and other issues preceded Mr. Obama’s outdoors address to about 4,500 people on the eastern side of the historic Brandenburg Gate, the side long closed off by the Berlin Wall, built by the former Sovier Union.President Bill Clinton had given a memorable address on that side in in 1994, seven years after President Ronald Reagan, from the western side, famously challenged the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev: “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” It fell two years later.

Mr. Obama’s address came 50 years after President John F. Kennedy, in another celebrated speech here, spoke outside a town hall to affirm support for Germans against the nuclear-armed Soviets. By contrast, Mr. Obama used his speech to propose that the United States and Russia reduce their nuclear arsenals by a third.

“Our fates and fortunes are linked like never before,” he said. “We may no longer live in fear of global annihilation, but so long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe.”

Officials said 4,500 people were present, fewer than the 6,000 tickets distributed — perhaps reflecting the scorching heat. Even so, that was far fewer than the 450,000 who saw Mr. Kennedy or the 200,000 who packed a park to hear Mr. Obama in 2008, when he was a presidential candidate. Then, Ms. Merkel had discouraged his use of the Brandenburg Gate site, saying it should not be used for politicking. This time she invited him to use it.

The anticipation of Mr. Obama’s address, though, was offset by attention to revelations of the breadth of the two United States surveillance programs — one a huge database logging American phone calls and the other, called Prism, to monitor foreign communications at Internet companies and through phone logs without individual warrants.

At their news conference, Ms. Merkel said she and Mr. Obama had discussed the surveillance issue at length, indicating that it took precedence over subjects like the global economy and conflicts in Syria and Afghanistan. In turn, Mr. Obama justified the operations at length.

“We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of this information, not just in the United States but in some cases threats here in Germany,” he said. “So lives have been saved.”

He did not provide details. But Ms. Merkel cited the “Sauerland cell” in Germany as an example of the benefits of surveillance and information sharing with the Americans. In that case, four Islamic militants were sentenced to up to 12 years in prison in 2010 for plotting terrorist attacks against American targets in Germany. They were apprehended in 2007 and confessed in 2009. The Central Intelligence Agency was presumed at the time to have tipped off the German authorities.

Yet Ms. Merkel, sensitive to Germans’ privacy concerns and facing re-election this year, made clear that she had expressed her own concerns. “Although we do see the need for gathering information,” she said, “there needs to be due diligence.”

Mr. Obama countered that he made sure when he took office that the programs “were examined and scrubbed.” He explained, as he has to American audiences, that the United States monitored only metadata on phone numbers linked to suspected terrorist activities, and did not eavesdrop on the content of calls or e-mails without a court order.

“We do have to strike a balance, and we do have to be cautious about how our governments are operating when it comes to intelligence,” Mr. Obama said. But, he added, “This is not a situation in which we are rifling through the ordinary e-mails of German citizens or American citizens or French citizens or anybody else.”

Despite the controversy, the leaders’ interactions displayed a mutual respect and even closeness developed over nearly five years of coordinating on economic and security crises.

Mr. Obama repeatedly called the chancellor “Angela.” When she addressed him in German, she used “du,” the familiar form of the pronoun “you.” When they posed for photographers before dinner at a former palace, the two joked in English, causing the president to twice double over in laughter. Michelle Obama and Ms. Merkel’s husband, Joachim Sauer, conversed separately.

On most issues, the two leaders signaled their agreement, including on allied efforts to provide more aid to the Syrian insurgency, and plans for international forces to leave Afghanistan next year. Both said at the news conference that Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, had lost legitimacy. Both expressed hope for a new government without him, even as they acknowledged the strong opposition that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Assad’s ally, expressed when the leaders of the Group of 8 industrial nations gathered in Northern Ireland this week for their annual summit meeting.

Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel were vague about their differences on economic policy. The Obama administration has pressed euro zone countries, in particular Germany, to provide stimulus or at least soften the demands for austerity measures and budget-cutting from indebted European nations.

American surveillance was not the only controversy to dog Mr. Obama in Germany. While some newspapers carried headlines like “Welcome to Berlin,” the left-leaning Berlin Daily Taz jabbed him with, “Mr. Obama, open this gate!” accompanying a photo of the barbed-wire gate at the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which the president had promised in 2008 to close. Amnesty International held a modest protest near the hotel where Mr. Obama and his family were staying. As a far greater number of police officers looked on, 14 people in orange jumpsuits like those worn by prison detainees chained themselves together and chanted, “Yes, you can! Close Guantánamo!”

A German reporter raised the issue at the news conference. “It’s been more difficult than I had hoped,” given Congressional resistance, to close the prison, Mr. Obama said, but added that he would “redouble” his efforts.

Correction: July 1, 2013

An article on June 20 about President Obama’s visit to Germany erroneously attributed a distinction to Mr. Obama’s speech a day earlier at the Brandenburg Gate, using information provided by the White House and staff members at the American Embassy in Berlin. President Bill Clinton, not Mr. Obama, was the first American president to speak from that side of the gate since the Berlin Wall separating the eastern and western sides fell in 1989. Mr. Clinton’s speech was in 1994.

Alison Smale, Melissa Eddy and Chris Cottrell contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on June 20, 2013, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Obama Says Surveillance Helped in Case in Germany. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe